Disappearing External Hard Drive.

[wobf58]

I just got a Hitachi Touro 2TB for $102.  It worked fine at the beginning and I backed up a lot and all the sudden its not showing up in PCLOS anymore even though its showing up in the Control Center under USB Mass Storage Devices.  Any ideas why this is happening?

[Yankee]

I just got a Hitachi Touro 2TB for $102.  It worked fine at the beginning and I backed up a lot and all the sudden its not showing up in PCLOS anymore even though its showing up in the Control Center under USB Mass Storage Devices.  Any ideas why this is happening?

Where, what program or file manager is it not showing up in ?

[djohnston]

I just got a Hitachi Touro 2TB for $102.  It worked fine at the beginning and I backed up a lot and all the sudden its not showing up in PCLOS anymore even though its showing up in the Control Center under USB Mass Storage Devices.  Any ideas why this is happening?

What is the result of ls /media in a terminal?

[wobf58]

When I bought the drive everything was fine.  I plugged it in and connected it to the laptop running PCLOS and then I backed up a lot to it.  Next day I was wondering why the Hitachi is not showing up in any file explorer.  It is showing up though in the Control Center under Hardware / USB Mass Storage Devices.
Identification
Vendor: ‎Hitachi GST
Description: ‎Touro Desk Pro
Media class: ‎Mass Storage|SCSI|Bulk (Zip)

Connection
Bus: ‎USB
Bus PCI #: ‎2
PCI device #: ‎4
Vendor ID: ‎0x4971
Device ID: ‎0x1013

Misc
Module: ‎usb_storage

Just wondering why then its not showing up in any file explorer as well its not showing in KDE Partition Manager.  Its showing up in Windows 7 and XP though.  Very strange.

With the ls / media command its not showing either.
DATA/  disk/  disk-1/  disk-2/  disk-3/  PCL_EDU/  TOOLS/

Its just showing the partitions I have on my laptop HD.  Maybe I just return the drive and get a different one.

[muungwana]

unplug it,wait for 5 seconds then plug it back in, wait for 5 seconds and then run the following command and post its output


dmesg | tail -n 20

[wobf58]

The following is showing up with the command dmesg | tail -n 20.

usb 2-3: SerialNumber: 2315460098394C02
scsi8 : usb-storage 2-3:1.0
scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access              USB 2.0          5.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 4063232 512-byte logical blocks: (2.08 GB/1.93 GiB)
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
usb 2-3: USB disconnect, address 5
usb 2-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
usb 2-3: New USB device found, idVendor=4971, idProduct=1013
usb 2-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 2-3: Product: Touro Desk Pro
usb 2-3: Manufacturer: Hitachi GST
usb 2-3: SerialNumber: 03100110427280002766
scsi9 : usb-storage 2-3:1.0

[muungwana]

Odd,it is first recognized,a partition in it also recognized but it get disconnected and it doesnt get recognized properly the second time. The second time,the drive is recognized but not a partition in it.

Are you sure all the cables are connected properly?

Did you update the kernel? any other packages btw when it worked and now?

what kernel are you using? open the terminal and give output of:

uname -r

[wobf58]

I did nothing to the drive.  Its still the originally and not divided in any partitions.  I dont changed any kernels.  It still the one I used since it came out, 2.6.38.8-pclos3.pae.bfs.  The only thing I am doing pretty much every day is to run the updater.  Maybe it would help to format it.  Right now its still the originally and that is NTFS-3G.

[wobf58]

I tried with several other distros with newer kernels.  Same problem.  The only what works well is with Windows.  Maybe I can do anything with fdisk?  Don't know.  I hate to return it since its a nice drive with no noise at all and it was only $102.

[djohnston]

wobf58,

Is there a power switch on that drive? If not, with Linux running, try this. If it's not showing in a file manager, unplug the USB cable. Next, unplug the power connector where it goes to your surge protector, UPS or wall outlet. Wait one minute. Plug the power cord in again. Then reconnect the USB cable.

[Just17]

Please post the section of the output relevant to the USB drive, from the following command

fdisk -l

It may be a structure set up problem which a rebuild of the partition table etc might fix .........  or maybe not ..... 

[wobf58]

There is no on/off switch.  I tried it with unplugging the way it was suggested but unfortunately it wasn't working.

Here the output of dmesg and fdisk:

[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | tail -n 11
 sdb: sdb1
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
usb 2-3: USB disconnect, address 5
usb 2-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
usb 2-3: New USB device found, idVendor=4971, idProduct=1013
usb 2-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 2-3: Product: Touro Desk Pro
usb 2-3: Manufacturer: Hitachi GST
usb 2-3: SerialNumber: 03100110427280002766
scsi9 : usb-storage 2-3:1.0
[root@localhost ~]# fdisk /dev/sdb

Unable to open /dev/sdb

What I don't understand is that the drive get recognized but its not showing up anywhere.  I cant even format it since when just starting the laptop with gparted, its not showing up there.  I guess I will return it tomorrow.  Any suggestions of a 2TB drive what really works well with Linux?

[Just17]

Will fdisk list the drive?

fdisk -l

What about

ls /dev/sd*

does that return anything for  sdb or other?

[wobf58]

With the drive plugged into a USB port, PCLOS will not boot.

After starting up PCLOS, then plug in the Hitachi drive, same problem like always.

Keeping it plugged in, starting Virtualbox with Windows XP, its showing up as a USB device but is not working.

After unchecking the drive in Virtualbox, its showing up then in PCLOS as a USB and I can work with it.

How strange is that.  This is a work around but not a solution.  So I might end up to get a different backup drive, do a full backup and then return the Hitachi.


Here are the data what I got when its working in PCLOS.

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000200d7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63    68260184    34130061   83  Linux
/dev/sda2        68260185    91072484    11406150   83  Linux
/dev/sda3        91072485   136520369    22723942+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4   *   136520431   976768064   420123817    5  Extended
/dev/sda5       136520433   150175619     6827593+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       150175683   172923659    11373988+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7       172923723   195671699    11373988+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8       195671763   810077624   307202931   83  Linux
/dev/sda9       810077688   976768064    83345188+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000396746752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907024896 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5a92321d

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              63  3907007999  1953503968+   7  HPFS/NTFS



dmesg | tail -n 20

sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 4b 00 10 08
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
usb 2-3: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
usb 2-3: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
scsi10 : usb-storage 2-3:1.0
scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Hitachi  Hitachi HDS72302 A580 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] 3907024896 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB)
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 4b 00 10 08
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

[wobf58]

The trick with VirtualBox works and I can work with it in PCLOS but when I unplug it then form the laptop and power plug it in again after some minutes, its not showing up.  Only the way with starting VirtualBox with Windows XP, checking it there and then uncheck it and then its showing up in PCLOS.  I don't know what I did to get hit with this strange behavior.

Any suggestions for a 2TB drive what IS working well with LINUX